


A Would-be Detective

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 00:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19779433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Cassie Welles always wanted to be a detective...





	A Would-be Detective

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'muscle'

A Would-be Detective

by Bluewolf

Carolyn Plummer had left Cascade; gone to a somewhat higher paid job in San Francisco.

Jim wasn't quite sure how he felt about her departure.

They had remained on friendly terms after their divorce; indeed, they both admitted, remarkably cheerfully, that they were better friends after their divorce than they had been during their marriage. Simon, who knew both well, suspected that neither had really been prepared for the intimacy of living together. And while Jim was now sharing his house with Blair, poker nights at the loft showed the Major Crime personnel quite clearly that the one thing they didn't share was a bedroom. So, even as close friends as they were, each had his personal space in a way that Jim and Carolyn hadn't.

Simon also suspected that Carolyn was ever so slightly resentful that Jim seemed happier sharing his space with Blair than he had been sharing it with her, and that was at least one other reason why she moved away from Cascade - although the higher pay didn't hurt.

Ironically, her replacement in Forensics - Cassie Welles - had moved to Cascade from San Francisco.

he Cascade police quickly learned that Cassie was extremely competent at her job.

Unfortunately... she wanted, desperately wanted, to be a detective. She had the ability, the mindset necessary to be a successful detective - but she had asthma. Severe asthma. She hadn't been able to pass the medical necessary for her to enter police training. Forensics had been the only way she could get a job with the police, a job where she could help to solve crimes. But equally unfortunately, she couldn't help but muscle in on the investigations being made by the men and women who were actually employed to be detectives. They understood her motivation. They could accept her insights and agree that those were useful. But...

Her employment was initially for a probationary six month period. And while everyone was agreed that as a forensic examiner she was excellent, her push to do a detective's work counted against her, and at the end of the six months her period of employment was terminated. The Police Commisioner considered that her obsession with detective work meant that, excellent though she was, she was not giving her full attention to the forensic work for which she was employed.

Jim wasn't sorry to see her go. Although he didn't dislike her as a person, on the occasions when they had had to work together he had found her something of an irritant. It wasn't jealousy, even when he considered the one or two occasions she had arrived at a crime scene first and promptly found a couple of pieces of evidence the detectives hadn't had a chance to find. Part of Forensics' job *was* to find evidence. In any case, it wouldn't be the first time - or the hundredth - where Blair made some comment that provided a vital clue - not just for him, but for any of the Major Crime detectives investigating something. No... it was more something about the way she did it, almost as if she was saying 'See? I am too a detective!' As if she thought she was wasted in Forensics, that Forensics was somehow less important...

There had been no way of persuading Cassie that the two jobs complemented each other. That neither one was more important. He considered the number of times that Forensics had proved something for the detectives. Provided proof, acceptable in Court, where the detectives had only observation, deduction and supposition, damning for the accused though those often were - and he knew that Cassie would-be detective though she was, totally failed to see and appreciate the true value of what she could do as opposed to what she wanted to do.

And he pitied her for it.


End file.
